The Parable of the Sower Chapters 1-4
Chapters 1-4
Lauren Oya Olamina is a black teenager living in the fictional town of Robledo, located close to Los Angeles, California. Lauren lives with her three stepbrothers, her father, and her Latina stepmother, Cory. The night before Lauren's fifteenth and her father's fifty-fifth birthday, she has another one of her recurring dreams, she has them whenever she feels forced into behaving as her father would like, and tomorrow she plans to do just that. Lauren has been teaching herself to fly in her dreams, she's getting better with every dream, but has trouble with directions. In the dream, Lauren is flying slowly towards a doorway, but she instead begins to drift towards the hallway wall. Out of nowhere, flames erupt from the wall, and Lauren can't escape them. She continues moving towards the flames, and soon they begin to consume her. She usually wakes up at this point, but this time, the dream shifts and turns into a scene from her memory.
She is seven and helping her stepmother pick the clothes from the laundry line in the evening. There is no moon, but the night sky is lit with millions of stars, and Cory remarks that there were far fewer stars when she was young. Lauren asks her why and Cory reveals that during her time, city lights had burned bright, and so they had hidden the light of the stars. She wishes that things return to normal soon so that city lights could once again outshine the light of the mild stars, but Lauren thinks that the stars look much better.
The next day, Sunday, Lauren journeys to a real church located across town, she is accompanied by her father, brothers, some other adults, and children from their neighborhood. All the youngsters are going to be baptized at a real church, Lauren's father is a baptist preacher and could perform the ritual at home but he decided that it would be worth it to have it at an actual church. He had had a church of his own, it had been located outside their neighborhood wall and so had been burned. Now, he held mass from his living room every Sunday. The baptism was important to Lauren's father, and so he had spent the extra money to ensure they had clean water for it. Clean water was nearly too expensive, but with the inclusion of the other children from the neighborhood, it was made almost affordable.
The conditions outside the neighborhood walls are deplorable, they pass by several dead, injured, and diseased homeless people. Most neighborhoods on their way had walls, some of them were made of poor materials, and there were yet some without any walls. These unwalled neighborhoods were marked by the burned skeletons of once-prosperous homes and groups of barely clothed emaciated children. These sights were a challenge for Lauren because she had a unique condition, she was an empath. She had been diagnosed with Hyperempathy syndrome, and it caused her to experience the pain and pleasure of those around her. Given that there was so little pleasure in the world, she mostly just shared pain. When she was young, her brother, Keith, made her bleed by pretending to be hurt. She had beaten him senseless even though it had hurt her as much as him. Keith is Cory's favorite, and he wants to go and live in LA. Her father was a professor, Dean, and preacher. He wanted to keep Lauren's condition a secret. He worried that people would learn that Lauren's mother, who had during childbirth, had been a drug addict, and her drug abuse had marked Lauren with that condition. Her father believed that Lauren could overcome the syndrome, as the pain was delusional and a product of a neurological deformity. He looked at her now, and Lauren did her best to keep a straight face, free from any indication of the many jabs of pain she felt as they passed the homeless people. The only thing keeping the desperate homeless people at bay was the number of people in their group and the visible guns the adults bore.
They arrived at the fortressed church, guarded by iron bars and heavily armed security personnel. Lauren had begun to believe in her own God three years ago, and she no longer believed in her father's God. She chose not to share that information with anyone just yet. Lauren is the last to be baptized and wonders about how God is depicted in the Bible. She thinks the Book of Job reminds her of Zeus, a powerful man that toyed uncaringly with his devotees.
The last Window Wall television of the neighborhood went dark, but before it did, Lauren saw a report about an astronaut on the colony of Mars. This astronaut, Alicia Catalina Godinez Leal, had died during the Mars mission and she had wanted to be buried on Mars. It was her heaven, she had worked towards the goal of Mars throughout her life and turned it into reality through persistence. The secretary of Aeronautics insisted on binging her body back to the country, Lauren thought he was an idiot. The current cabinet was one of the youngest ever, and it had already begun to face severe criticism. Christopher Morpeth Donner, a presidential candidate, promised to abolish the wasteful space program upon being elected. Lauren's father liked him, and like many others concurred with him about the wasteful nature of Space travel. Lauren is opposed to that opinion. She believes that Space travel should be encouraged, and idolizes Alicia Leal for her determination and bravery.
Mrs. Simms was an old and sanctimonious lady that lived in the neighborhood all by herself since her son and daughter-in-law did not get on well with her. She had a problem with several people in the neighborhood. She disliked the Chinese family for their religious beliefs and Lauren's family for their interracial pairing. She was recently robbed by three men who snuck into the neighborhood at night. They had taken her money, beaten her, and one of them had even raped the poor old woman. She had been struck low by that tragedy, but then her son and his family had passed away. All eleven of them had been victims of an arson fire. They had lived in an unwalled neighborhood, and it was unclear why they had all been killed for they had been very poor. Mrs. Simms shot herself soon after learning about her son. Lauren's father and stepmother found the body, and the police told them that she had been dead for three days.
Lauren is bothered by the knowledge of Mrs. Simms's suicide, and the news of Alicia Leal. She wonders how Mrs. Simms, a devout Christian who believed every word of the bible, could have taken her own life knowing that she would be damned. Lauren believes that God is not supposed to be worshiped, for God is inevitable and God is change. God can only be shaped with focus and action, God doesn't know people, he doesn't care for them, he just is. Lauren has been writing her thoughts about God since she was 12 years old, but she sometimes doubts whether any of her thoughts are real. She wonders if her obsession with this ideology is something like her disease that causes her to experience delusional pain. Whatever it is, Lauren is certain that she needs to follow through with it, irrespective of the consequences that it might bring.
In November 2024, Donner won the presidential election and announced the abolition of space exploration programs. He also has a plan to put people back to work by allowing corporations to hire people without the restrictive standards of worker protection laws, as long as the companies provide them with training and adequate accommodation. Lauren fears the implications of the law and how it might encourage corporations to mistreat their employees. Her father did not vote for Donner, he didn't vote for anyone because he felt that none of them cared for the woes of the citizens. Amy Dunn, the daughter of Tracy Dunn, started a fire in their garage, no one called the fire department since no one would willingly afford their fee. Amy is a neglected child, possibly because she is the daughter of Tracy, a teenager, and her uncle, a smiling and pleasant man, who had been raping Tracy from an early age. Mrs. Simms's house is now occupied by some of her unpleasant relatives, the families of the twins, Wardell Parrish and Rosalee Payne.
Lauren goes outside the walls with her father and another adult in a small group of teenagers, that includes her boyfriend, Curtis Talcott. They are all going for target practice which is almost like a rite of passage in the neighborhood. Lauren's father is responsible for their community's obsession with guns, he had encouraged people to be armed and trained with firearms. In their time, police were no help in the prevention of crime, and so now almost all households had a couple of firearms. Children were taught handling weapons from an early age and then taken out into the world for shooting practice around the age of 15. Lauren's brother, Keith, is obsessed with owning a gun and attempts to accompany the shooting groups whenever they set out. He is never allowed because he is 12, and the age rule is firm. Her father spent a lot of time training Lauren and had ensured that she could shoot live animals like rats, birds, and squirrels. Lauren thinks that he did so because he wanted to be sure that she could kill despite her hymperempathy. The Moss siblings are also a part of the group, they are children of the polygamous Peter Moss, who now has three wives and several children from all of them. His well-paying job as an engineer allows him to bring in poor and homeless beautiful women into his household and call them his wives. He began a religion, one that is an amalgamation of the Old Testament and historical West African practices.
The group's shooting practice is interrupted by the sight of feral dogs, Aura Moss nearly shoots one of the other teenagers, as she panics on seeing the dog. Lauren's father goes to investigate and discovers a family of people half-eaten by dogs. Feral dogs were a real danger and had been known to attack and feed on weak or tired people. He didn't tell any of them about the bodies but only said that they needed to leave. As the group was working their way through the hills, they realize that they are being watched by a large pack of Dogs. Lauren's father had to shoot one for straying too close, but as Lauren walked by the shot dog, she realized that the dog was still alive. She felt his pain begin to work on her system, but before it could overwhelm her, she leaned forward, took careful aim, and shot it in the head. No one seemed to realize how terrible she felt after experiencing the animal's death, on the contrary, Curtis seemed to find her seeming deliberate ease impressive.
Analysis
The first chapter of the novel is heavy in foreshadowing events later in the story. Lauren's dream about a narrow passageway and a wall that suddenly bursts into fire foreshadows the destruction that is to visit her life in the neighborhood. The second dream with Cory foreshadows the continued deterioration of their dystopian world due to the changing climate conditions. Lauren's comment about her preference for the stars indicates the future destiny of the Eartseed religion.
Lauren believes in a different God, at the tender and unsure age of 15, Lauren has given the concept of religion significant thought. Religion is one of the major themes that are explored in the novel, and Lauren is depicted as a christ-like figure. After her Baptism, she references the book of Job from the bible. Job was a righteous man with wealth and a happy family, Satan and God argued over Job's true nature. Satan believed that Job only appeared righteous because of his wealth and family's love, so God allowed Satan to destroy both. Job remained true to his God but questioned God why he is made to endure so much misery. God tells Job that he is much greater than Job and so could not be questioned by him. God returned Job his family and his wealth several times over. Lauren sees in this account, a God that is uncaring of his devotees, and she likens God to a child playing uncaringly with his toys.
The author paints a truly depressing picture of the economy, there seems to be a larger-than-life wealth gap between the rich and the poor. The rich have access to wonderful technology like touch rings while the poor barely have enough to survive. Lauren's family is poor but luckier than those that have to live on the street, yet they can't even afford to shower regularly. Interestingly, despite the scarcity of resources, children are abundant. This could be because there are limited options for birth control, condoms are mentioned a couple of times in the book but they aren't readily available.
